Saturday, June 14, 2014

Digital Diner takes to the sky!

We've been talking about it for so long -

Finally, we have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-white rotating blades;Sunward we’ve climbed, and joined the 3D stabilized mirthof multi-rotor drones, — and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the GoProed silence. Hov’ring there,We’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungOur eager craft through footless halls of air....- Appologies to John Gillespie Magee

Widdakay does ground prep for the first flight

We got ourselves a quadcopter (a DJI Phantom 2 with Zenmuse H3-3D, thanks for asking), strapped a GoPro to it and sent it up. It was a very windy day today, so we were very pleasantly surprised to find that despite the wind, the quadcopter was easy to control and fly for over 20 minutes on a single charge. We are just learning, so we have a lot to learn, but so far the video looks quite promising. So far we've only made one flight, so there is still a lot to learn, but we have a first video to show you. Really it is just a fancy selfie (for best results watch in HD).

What you are seeing is the video from the GoPro camera mounted underneath the quadcopter. We got this gadget to help us make some dramatic aerial footage for our home movies, but I expect it to be a great platform for all sorts of experiments too. The aircraft is being controlled from a radio control unit and a bunch of onboard electronics. For instance, this quadcopter has a GPS on board that allows it to hover exactly where you leave it in the air, even in a strong wind like we had today. If for any reason the craft looses contact with the remote control, if flies back to its home location (usually where it took off) and lands. Kind of incredible. The camera is mounted to a 3D stabilize platform that keeps the camera steady while the quadcopter bounces around in the wind. We'll tell you more about this as we get more experience.

Getting good video: For those of you who are interested in this sort of stuff, you may notice a slight jello effect on the video. That is due to the vibration of the quadcopter as it flies, causing the camera to move as it scans the picture. This can be fixed with a little neutral density filter to slow down the shutter enough to counteract the vibration of the camera. Also, we had the camera set to auto white balance, which turned out to be a bad idea we will keep it on manual in the future. On top of that, we need to learn the best angles to steer the camera...

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Welcome to the Digital Diner

We believe that a stimulated mind lives in a happy brain. Our family is happy to inspire you by feeding you thoughts and ideas about technology, education, books and other things from the world around us as well as a few projects of our own. Please enjoy them at your leisure.

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About us: We are a family living in California - Parents Monika Schoenhoff & Roger Meike and kids nicknamed Widdakay(16) and Bix(14)